1

I'm not very familiar with the Android system, but I recently updated my phone from 5.0.1 to 5.1. Unfortunately, one of the games I play doesn't support 5.1 yet, so I would like to revert to 5.0.1. From what I've read online, the main way to do this seems to be to flash a ROM on your phone, which, as I understand, is similar to factory resetting your phone with an older factory image. The problem with this is that it seems it would also delete the game data.

Is there any way to revert back to version 5.0.1 without this process?

Matthew Read
  • 50,567
  • 30
  • 145
  • 273
Teofrostus
  • 113
  • 4
  • AFAIK, no, the only way to downgrade is to flash the ROM you want. If you have unlocked the bootloader before, you could downgrade without deleting your data. On the other hand, you could just backup your data first, then flash the ROM, then restore the data. Lastly, if the game uses cloud save, then you won't lose the data even if you change your device. – Andrew T. Mar 31 '15 at 09:33
  • One question per post please -- as Andrew notes we have lots of questions on backing up data, please check them out. – Matthew Read Mar 31 '15 at 13:39
  • @MatthewRead Thanks for deleting the answer. I was only addressing the users main concern about the game data. However I think you are right, the question is not about users concern but what user asks. Its valuable lesson for me. – Prachil Tambe Mar 31 '15 at 14:03
  • @prachil sorry, I'm not sure what are you referring to? I don't know if you answered. Also, that's why I only post my suggestion as a comment since I couldn't answer the question certainly. – Andrew T. Mar 31 '15 at 14:17
  • @AndrewT. Sorry, the comment is meant for Firelord. deleting now – Prachil Tambe Mar 31 '15 at 14:23

1 Answers1

1

There's no sort of "rollback" feature on Android. Due to device space limitations the old OS image is not kept around.

So to downgrade you'd have to flash. It's not necessarily the case that you'll lose your data when doing this, but it depends what the ROM's updater script does and whether the ROM will work with the data left by the previous version (you might need to manually factory reset, which is generally recommended before flashing). As Andrew noted in the comments, unlocking your bootloader will wipe the device so if you need to do that to flash then you're out of luck. As such it is always recommended that you do a backup before flashing.

Matthew Read
  • 50,567
  • 30
  • 145
  • 273